They put out this statement: “Today Mitt Romney, a candidate for President, held a press conference outside of St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan without the knowledge or consent of the hospital to make a statement regarding the healthcare debate in the Presidential campaign. As a non-profit organization, St. Vincent’s Hospital does not become involved in political campaigns. We find it unfortunate that Mr. Romney misappropriated the image and good will of St. Vincent’s Hospital to further a political agenda. While St. Vincent’s believes that there needs to be real discussion about healthcare reform and finding ways to provide coverage to the now 47 million Americans without health insurance, it is inappropriate for the hospital to be used for political gain.”

Mitt Romney chose the sidewalk in front of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, home of the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center, for a news conference this morning blasting Senator Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.

Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who happened to be on Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Giuliani’s home turf for fund-raising events today, took the opportunity to critique her proposal before the full details were even out.

“If you’ve seen the report this morning on the latest version of Hillarycare, you’ll see that version 2.0 is not like to have any more success than 1.0,” he said. “Hillarycare continues to be bad medicine.”

Mr. Romney has released his own health care plan, which relies on federal incentives for market reforms, tax deductions and other changes to encourage people to buy health insurance and drive down costs. A central principle is its “federalist” approach, encouraging states to take their own steps to lower the cost of health insurance.

“In her plan, we have government insurance, instead of private insurance,” Mr. Romney said. “In her plan, it’s crafted by Washington. It should be crafted by the states.”

“I think she takes her inspiration from European bureaucracies and instead we should take our inspiration from the American people,” Mr. Romney added.

Mr. Romney said there was no special significance in the location of this morning’s appearance, saying he was unaware that Mr. Giuliani, his rival for the Republican nomination, had been honored with the naming of the hospital’s trauma center several years ago. Mr. Giuliani’s wife, Judith, took a central role in raising money for the center. But St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers, the network to which the Manhattan hospital belongs, came under fire from abortion opponents for naming the center after Mr. Giuliani, who supports abortion rights.

“I chose a place where there was a public sidewalk in front of a hospital,” Mr. Romney said.

Mr. Giuliani’s campaign also took the opportunity to take aim at the Clinton health plan toda, putting out a press release titled “It’s Enough To Make You Sicko,” and quoting Katie Levinson, Giuliani spokeswoman: “If you liked Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko,’ you’re going to love HillaryCare 2.0. Senator Clinton’s latest health scheme includes more government mandates, expensive federal subsidies and more big bureaucracy – in short, a prescription for an increase in wait times, a decrease in patient care and tax hikes to pay for it all.”

Barack Obama and John Edwards also put out statements about the Clinton plan before Mrs. Clinton even spoke, highlighting aspects of their own universal health insurance plans and gently tweaking her for laying out ideas months after they both did.

“It’s similar to the one I put forth last spring, though my universal health care plan would go further in reducing the punishing cost of health care than any other proposal that’s been offered in this campaign,” Mr. Obama said. “But the real key to passing any health care reform is the ability to bring people together in an open, transparent process that builds a broad consensus for change.”

Mr. Edwards, in remarks earlier today in Chicago, added a new proposal to his plan: He said that as president he would press legislation that ends health care coverage for the president, members of Congress and political appointees on July.20, 2009, until the Congress passes the Edwards health care plan.

Hillarycare, as some Republicans like Governor Romney like to call it, is repeatedly and erroneously hyped as government run health care. Dispensing this misinformation, in an effort to derail it, is what Romney’s position is all about. This is not a plan to eliminate private insurance; it is a plan to mandate individual coverage with some help provided by tax subsidies. It is hard to know what the Governor has in mind when he wants each state to do its own thing, but it sounds totally confusing. He probably refers to the universal mandate, a mandate he apparently felt was appropriate when he was governor of Massachusetts.

I really get underwhelmed by anything Mitt says. He is headlined here criticizing Hillary and the point is, these republican candidates want to be the first to do it. He says that it does not matter what Hillary says in her speech – it will be the same as what he is saying here. Sounds like the corporate media.

Calm down, everybody – in the other blog – the gang bashing has begun in earnest. The only difference is, that one are mainly “democrats” who obsess so much about Hillary they are so, sooooo
predictable and willfully wrong. And boringly repetitive.

I don’t think healthcare should be managed at a national level. If you let the local and state governments manage this, people in general will be more satisfied because it will cater more specifically to their needs. Both candidates should review the role the federal government should play in something as individualistic as health care.

Before people get all worked about this, let’s take a look at Hillary’s plan. She proposes a government subsidy of $110 billion dollars annually to assist people in affording private insurance. This is sure to grow as the health care corporation find ways of jacking up prices. Essentially, this is throwing more money at our already bloated health care industry. Right now, we spend in excess of 9% GNP on health care in this country. No other Western country spends more than 3% of GNP to provide complete health care for all of it’s citizens. Moreover, our halth care service, as measured against other industriezed countries for quality, doesn’t even make it into the top 20! If we implimented a Scandiavian style system, one with truly universal coverage, we could cover every Amercian citizen under such a plan for about 80 bilion dollars annually and provide better quality care. Ms. Clinton’s involvemenbt of health care corporations in her plan is no different than Dick Cheney’s using energy corporation in his secret task force. Throwing money at corporations for essential services is insane, it is inefficient, it is too expensive, and is ultimately doomed to failure. If you really want (and I do) universal health care coverage, the way to achieve it is to remove private corporation from the process. That would immediately get costs uder control and remove the enormous group of investor parasite that make money off the misery of others. Hillary ought to be ashamed of herself.

Romney is just another rich boy who is so far from middle class reality that he is totally incapable of helping anyone except those who do not need it. HRC accepts too much money from the health care industry to ever change anything. The health care industry is simply overcharging and performing to many tests and procedures- THAT IS THE REAL PROBLEM!!

Mitt Romney says that Hillary Clinton’s plan is socialized medicine and is “European”. He says we should have an “American Plan”.

Well, the American Plan doesn’t seem to be working.

John McCain says MoveOn.org should be thrown out of the country. I guess he’s not a big fan of the 1st Amendent to the US Constitution.

Republicans don’t seem to do much except go on the attack and many of their comments seem, well, Unamerician. That isn’t working and Americans should be thinking critically about casting their votes for a more positive future.

Can Guliani or Romney read? This plan is the antithesis of the effecient, European or Canadian health care systems. Senator Clinton’s plan combines the worst elements of our current system (private insurance companies) with a new, annoying element (individual mandates on the poor). She claims she wants to avoid increasing “bearucracy,” but her plan subsidizes the very bearucracy that ruins our health care system, the pointless 20-25 cents out of every health care dollar we spend on “administrative costs.” Compare that to Canada, where less than 8 cents out of every health care dollar is spent on adminsitrative costs. A true Democrat would be embarassed to author this plan.

It is very hard to decide which candidate to select as one’s nominee. It is easier to decide which to reject. Romney just made my list of rejections. He is against government run programs. This also includes Gulliani since he too is against Socialism. I cant back anyone who is against Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans programs, Veterans Hospitals Walter Reid, Social Security, police and firemen, and many other government run programs.

As a small business owner, I want to provide health care to my employees but cannot afford to do so. All of my employees work from home in their home State That leaves me with no ability to pool my employees into a single plan. Instead, I would have to maintain a health plan for each state in which I employee someone. The costs of plans for one or two employees per State are astronomical and provide minimal coverage with questionable care.

Personally I think the employer based health care model is ridiculous. It imposes a significant burden on American based business when compared to our competitors in other countries. But more importantly, it puts my employees at risk in case the company goes out of business. There are also significant competitive disadvantages to hiring employees in various States due to the significantly higher costs of insurance policies. Only through guaranteed National coverage will businesses be provided a competitive environment.

Here in New York I receive my own coverage through Working Today. //www.freelancersunion.org/ The coverage and rates are significantly better than what is available through a small business policy. Unfortunately, their coverage is limited to the NYC area and restricted to a small number of occupations. Even if the small business policies were competitive with those available through Working Today, I would still choose the Working Today plans. The Working Today coverage will still be there for me if my company were to fail.

What an irresponsible and tired load of hot air from Romney in response to a serious-minded and courageous step from Clinton. I’m not even a huge Clinton fan, but Americans look around at the rest of the world in shame at how inferior our health coverage is, and at least she has the guts to broach the issue. I don’t remember any Republican candidate bringing any substantive health care discussion to the forefront of their platform prior to this. Looks to me like Hillary has them on the defensive.

Doesn’t it seem like any issue that Republicans can’t muster the gumption to face gets the “send it to the states” treatment (see Romney’s statement)? To me, that ultimately signals that they could care less about the issue and don’t want to spend any of their political capital to make a stand that matters. Also, though some would dismiss it, I think _Sicko_ showed some evidence that the “longer wait times” fear-mongering drivel that Giuliani and other health-care-reform opponents tirelessly conjecture has little basis in fact. Even if it WERE true, which would you prefer folks: full health coverage for everybody or a 10-minute-shorter wait for your $300 checkup?

I would also like to note that I am a fully covered working professional, but I still wouldn’t mind paying a few extra tax dollars (should it come to that) to live in a world where my friends and family who work part-time and entry-level jobs can live their lives without having to equate getting sick or having an accident with financial disaster.

I’d love to know why anybody thinks that having health care is NOT a universal right for our citizens? Doesn’t the Declaration of Independence state that every American has the right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?” Doesn’t the Constitution say that it was established to “promote the general welfare” of all Americans?

I think that Hillary’s healthcare plan should be given a fair chance this time. I’m sure she learned from her last go-around with this issue, misakes to avoid. Also: just an observation: I noticed that the NYT, on their front page, still calls her ”Hillary Rodham Clinton,” while many, including I think Sen Harkin yesterday, say ”Hillary Clinton.”

Mr. Obama’s comment is false. Does the Times not bother checking what politicians say before printing it?

Most economic analysis points to a large part of the ridiculous cost of our health care coming from doctors having to pay several secretaries to figure out how to bill insurance companies. This is the additional cost of having several insurance companies. See Paul Krugman’s article on it in the New York Review of Books, for example. In any case, Edward’s plan, which moves towards a single-payer insurance, diminishes these costs in a way that Obama’s throwing money (subsidies) at health insurance doesn’t.

All this has made me nostalgic for Harry and Louise, who became celebrities in the 1990s brooding about Hillary’s first health care plan. Since they saved us all from socialized medicine, we should care about what happened to them in their golden years:

Instead of giving us the cant of Romney and the other candidates, how about a serious analysis of Clinton’s plan. Then do the same for plans of the other candidates as they are revealed?

I can get all the psycho-babble I want from cable ‘news’. I would prefer to READ the analyses of qualified individuals who know what they are talking about. That is what I expect from a major newspaper or periodical.

“Has anyone ever re-newed their drivers license? If you thought that was a nightmare try goverment healthcare on for size!”

Yes, I did this two months ago, in Michigan. I waited in line for approximately five minutes. The clerk was helpful and polite. Now, last time I went to a (private) doctor, I waited in the waiting room for approximately 45 minutes (for a scheduled appointment, mind you), and in the examining room for another 30 minutes. The doctor was okay, but the staff was less than helpful.

Maybe Mitt’s right when he says “I think she takes her inspiration from European bureaucracies and instead we should take our inspiration from the American people”, but if you look at the record since WWII, the European bureaucracies have been quite successful in providing universal health care and the American people have been miserable failures. It’s time to remove our ideological blinders and to take our inspiration from whatever works.

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